Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic

Qutation Of The Day

“We will come out of the Maidan either free or slaves. But we don’t want to be slaves.” Serhiy Sobolov, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, describing the protest standoff in Kiev’s Independence Square, known as Maidan.

$100 Million Ad Campaign to Press for Climate Change

Tom Steyer, 56, accumulated more than $1.5 billion during his days as a hedge fund manager before he retired in 2012. Today, he is among the most visible of a new breed of wealthy donors on the left who…
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Editor Calls Paper’s Endorsement “Regettable’

Nearly four months after his newspaper endorsed Chris Christie for a second term as covernor of New Jersey. the editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger called the paper’ decision to back him “regrettable.” The editor, Tom Moran, said the…
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Latest Attack: labeling Obama as “lawless”

The Republican messaging attack is at it again. The latest talking point is that the president is a “lawless” dictator” hellbent on operating outside, and indeed, above the law. On Thursday House Speaker John Boehner signaled that he might…
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High School Never Ends

Chris Christie has given us proof that anyone who clings to high school the way the 51-year old governor of New Jersey does makes her nervous. In his hilariously lame attempt to demonize his old teammate and handpickricked

Praising Philip Seymour Hoffman

It was clear, at least since he won the Oscar in 2006 for “Capote,” that the actor was an unusually fine actor. Really though, it was clear long before that, depending on when and where you started paying attention.…
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Huge “Super PAC”” Moving To Back Clinton

The Obama political operation that once buried Hillary Clinton’s White House ambitions is now converging around her possible 2016 presidential bid, conferring on Clinton enormous early advantages in money, expertise and voter targeting techniques. On Thursday, Priorities USA Action,…
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Upbeat Brown Looks Ahead

When Gov. Jerry Brown stepped up on Wednesday to deliver his 11th State of the State speech - a record for California, the governor momentarily put aside his prepared remarks to offer a more casual greeting. I used to…
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Another Romney Campaingn?

It’s hard to imagine, as Maureen Dowd reminds, anything more painful than going through the presidential campaign all over again with Mitt Romney. Unless it’s going through two presidential campaigns with Mitt Romney. But , yes, that’s the narrative…
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Investigation into New Jersey Bridge Scandal

Gov. Chris Christie has apologized ad nauseam for his subordinates’ failings, but he hasn’t adequately addressed the ultimate question addressed to President Richard M. Nixon President after the Watergate break-in: “What did he know and when did he know…
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Was Benghazi Attack Preventable?

A stinging report by the Senate Intelligence Committee released Wednesday concluded that the attack 16 months ago that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya could have been prevented, singling out the State Department for criticism for its failure to…
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Enimies of the Poor

Sudden, it’s O.K., even mandatory, for politicians with national ambitions talk about helping the poor. This is easy for Democrats, who can go back to the party of FDR and L.B.J. It’s much more difficult for Republicans having a…
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Maureen Dowd on Politics

After being showered with spin, you say to your self, maybe that first impression was wrong. But often it isn’t. Barack Obama is too much in his head. Cris Christie can be a bully. His two-hour ““I am not…
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What Happened to Transparency?

When Presidency Obama took office in 2009, he promised a “rare level of openness in government. The day after his inauguration, he wrote. “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure,…
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David Brooks and Gail Collins

Gail: I don’t know of any politician who likes wrestling with the mundane and limited more than Hillary Clinton. If she’s won the presidency in 2008, I don’t think she’d ever have forced the health care act into law.…
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Tactic to keep Republican rank-and-file riled up

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow believes something else is also at play here, something more cynical. I believe this is a natural result of a long-running ploy by Republican party leaders to play on the most base…
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Boehner Said to Back Change on Immigration

The Speaker’s ‘Step by Step” moves suggest a new commitment on a divisive issue for Republicans which signal that he may embrace a series of limited changes in nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change…
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Philadelphia Monsiginor’s Case Overturned

The Philadelphia district attorney who pressed the case, R.Seth Williams, said in a statement Thursday, “I am disappointed and strongly disagree with the court’s decision. Whether or not the conviction stands up, Monsignor William J. Lynn’s trial remains a…
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Christie’s Growing Bully Image

The early conventional wisdom among Republicans is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the leading candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 20016. In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild…
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John McCain: Learning to Let Go

The ‘Brave Maverick’ who became the ‘Bitter Old Man’ is now ‘Learning to Let Go and ‘Looking Back On His Life.’ How McCain turned his cliches into meaning. Mark Leibovich is the New York Times Magazine’s chief correspondent.…
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Obama’s Bland Reassurances

In a New York Times editorial Saturday on runaway surveillance, by the time the president gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course of action to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional…
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The Austerity Issue

Paul Krugman has pointed out that it’s true that the human cost has been nothing like what happened during the 1930. But that’s thanks to government policies like employment and a strong social safety net—the very policies austerians insisted…
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Pope Replaces Conservative U.S. Cardinal on Key Committee

Francis moved on Monday against an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage, by replacing Cardinal Raymond Burke with another American who is less identified with the cultural wars within the Roman Catholic Church. It was a signal that…
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Why Inequality Matters

Paul Krugman notes that it does matter. But politicians, intimidated by crises of “class warfare,” have shied away from making a major issue out of the evergrowing gap between the rich and the rest. That may, however, be changing.…
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Pope not a Marxist

Political conservatives are now trying to accuse Pope Francis of being a Marxist. But he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa he has met Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended. “I am…
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Paul Ryan’s Very Big Week

The chairman of the House Budget Committee teamed up with Democratic Sen. Patty Murry and succeeded in crafting a bipartisan budget. More important for Ryan was that he finished first in a new Iowa poll among 10 potential Republican…
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Mike Huckbee’s Eye on 2016

The former governor of Arkansas has not been among Republicans frequently named as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, but “I’m keeping the door open and would like that to change.” In an interview last week in Little Rock he…
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Joe’s Birthday

John Boehner Finds His Grove

The House Speaker ‘s rare public rebuke of conservative groups who oppose a pending bipartisan deal marks his clearest signal yet that GOP leadership has had enough of tea party-driven intransigence. They’re using our members and they’‘re using the…
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Honoring Roger Angell

His graceful prose has made him baseball’s foremost essayist for more than half a century, and Angell, 93, will be honored at the Hall of Fame next summer as the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award . A senior editor at The New Yorker and the first winner not to be a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which made the announcement of Tuesday. Angell’s elegant style and rich, erudite writing have always set him above the rest. It’s a great day—for me, if not for baseball. He first contributed to The New Yorker in 1944 and became its fiction editor in 1956. He first wrote about baseball in 1962. Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to is to succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. Angell wrote in 1971. “You remain forever young.”

His graceful prose, and baseball’s foremost essayist for more than half a century, will be honored at the Hall of Fame next summer. Angell, 93, a senior writer at The New Yorker and is the first winner not to…
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Ex-Clinton Aide to Join Obama

President Obama, at the lowest ebb of his presidency, is bringing into his White House circle the long-time Democratic strategist John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. Podesta, who has agreed to serve as…
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Nelson Mandela, Communist

A third reason the Communist affiliation matters is that it helps explain why South Africa has not made greater progress toward improving the lives of its large underclass, rooting out corruption and unifying a fractious populance.—- In the end,…
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Coaltion of Liberials Strikes Back at Centrist Democrats

As a sign of the left’s new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals have urged their members to contact a group of congressional Democrats who are honorary leaders of the centrist group, Third Way. In a Wall Street Journal opened…
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Warren Passes on Run for President

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the freshman Massachusetts Democrat, widely mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2016, said Wednesday that she would not run. “I will serve out my term which expires in January, 2019. “I am working as hard…
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Yes, The Drones Have Arrived

Maureen Dowd notes in her New York Tiimes column that the novelty of flying cars never arrived. But flying novels are right around the corner. If you aren’t nervous enough reading about 3-D printers spitting out handguns or Goggle…
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View of Church as Anti-Gay Is a Caricature

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said on Friday that the Roman Catholic Church was being “caricatured as being anti-gay,” even as he lamented the continued expansion of same-sex marriage in the United States and vowed to keep…
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Iran-Vatican Detente?

Iran’s President Hassan Rohani has informally begun a dialogue between the Islamic and Christian worlds, America, the Jesuit magazine, reported this week. He expressed hope for the alliance between Iran and the Holy See regarding major issues that shake…
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Clinton: Seeking State Department Legacy

Secretary of State John Kerry, at a recent symposium on Afghan women at Georgetown, praised his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he referred to “Madam Secretary-Senator-First Lady-Everything. Kerry’s remarks drew applause from the crowd but they also pointed to…
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Pope Francis Slams Unholy Markets, Idolaltry of Money

In his first major work Pope Francis urged the Catholic Church to commit itself to fighting poverty and called on world leaders to become more concerned about the current state of society. He opened the door to reforms in…
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GOP Governors Distance Themselves From DC

An ambitious group of powerful state governors, led by Cris Christie of New Jersey and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana used the Republican Governors Association annual conference in Arizona last week to both criticise the strategy of their party’s leaders…
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Unmasking Gov. Scott Walker

Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Mike Tate savaged Walker’s new book on Monday, saying he omitted critical facts and using it as a promotional tool to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Tate said glaring omissions include…
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Can Obama Learn from J.F. K.‘s Mistake?

The greatest problem of Kennedy’s presidency was the Bay of Pigs invasion. No sooner had he taken the oath of office than he discovered that the Pentagon and the C.I. A. were preparing to sent 1,500 Cuban exiles to…
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Senate: New Rules on Filibusters

A historic and bitterly divided Senate voted Thursday to ease the confirmation process for most presidential nominees, a momentous and potentially risky step that limits the ability of Republicans to block President Barack Obama’s choices for executive-branch and most…
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Tea Partiers Debate New Shutdown

Conservative leaders from more than a dozen outside groups warned congressional Tea Party Caucus members against another government shutdown. A heated discussion broke out Wednesday at a closed-door Tea Party Party Caucus meeting organized by the group TheTeaParty.net, according…
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The Cheney Feud

As Maureen Dowd reported the Cheney feud is the most stomach-turning, with Liz Cheney grubbing for a Senate seat as a carpetbagger against an incumbent Republican. What on earth makes her qualified to be a senator? How come she…
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Catholic Bishops: Expand Priorities

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, in his final address as president of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, called on them to take up the cause of Christians in many countries who have been persecuted and killed for their faith. But…
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Boehner Kills Immigration Push

The House Speaker signaled the end to push for major immigration legislation this year. He ruled out negotiations between the House and the Senate on an expansive immigration overhaul similar to one approved by the Senate and with bipartisan…
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Bulger’s Victims

It was a flood of emotion that overwhelmed a federal courtroom in Boston on Wednesday when relatives of Whitey Bulger told of ther loves and their losses—and their utter contempt for the defendant. Bulger , 84, was convicted in…
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Archbishop To Lead U.S. Bishops

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday elected Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville Ky..a prelate who has earned a reputation as a consensus-seeker, president of their conference on the first ballot. He succeeds Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of…
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Food Stamps: Harder Choices on Poor

Cuts in food stamps, a $10 or $20 cut in in the monthly food budget would be absorbed with little notice. But for millions of poor Americans who rely on food stamps, reductions that begin this month present awful…
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GOP Weighs Clout Of Right Wing

Party leaders are grappling with the vexing divisions over its identity and image, and mainstream leaders complain that more ideologically-driven conservatives are damaging the party with tactics like the government shutdown. The debate intensified on Wednesday after Kenneth T.…
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Joe Biden Deserves Respect

As Mark Halperin and John Heilemann write in their new book, “Double Down,” Joe Biden worried that he would be cast as the buffoon, calling it the “Uncle Joe Syndrome,” and he confronted the president about it at a…
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2016: Is Hillary Already In?

A poll released last week by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal charted the decline. It found that the percentage of Americans who favor her favorably dropped to 46 from 56. The percentage with unfavorable views had risen,…
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Virginia GOP Wake-Up Call

Kathleen Parker, the Washington Post conservative columnist, is among those predicting that Terry McAuliffe will be elected Virginia governor on Tuesday. Washington Post polling shows that the Democratic businessman and fundraiser has a double-digit lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli…
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Replacing Biden with Clinton?

The journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, in their new book, “Double Down,” being released this week, provides a detailed description of the effort inside the senior circle of Obama advisers to replace Vice President Joseph R. Biden with…
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Obama and Big Donors

The President, who is known to detest the intense care and feeding some campaign donors require, told his campaign manager that he could not even name his top five bundlers—“I just have no idea.” After meeting with the liberal…
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Whispers of Race Persist

John Harwood wrote in The New York Times last week President Obama sought to turn attention from health care to immigration—in other words, from one racially divisive issue to another. Whites tend to hold negative views of Obamacare, while…
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Remembering Reagan’s Advice

Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the leader of Iraq, is meeting with President Obama in the White House on Friday. Iraq, he insists, has matured into a country with democratic institutions that are bound by a Constitution. He says “while we…
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Get Beyond Politics

A New York Times editorial noted the talk in Washington has focused on how, after the shutdown debacle, Republicans and Democrats might exploit immigration for political advantage. But last week, the genuine immigration crisis intruded, as if from another…
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Camelot’s Court: Inside JFK White House

It is tempting, as Evan Thomas in his review of Robert Dallek’s latest book on JFK notes, that there is nothing really new here. But Dallek, whose “An Unfinished Life (9003),” was the first to expose the severity of…
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Finding GOP Grown-Ups

Leaders of the Republican Party are said to be restocking their ranks, Sen.Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told The New York Times, to restore the public’s trust. “You’ve got to have adults running the thing.” Hatch and other establishment senators believe…
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Biggest Economy Killer: U.S. Government

Steven Rattner, a longtime Wall Street executive who served as a lead auto adviser in the Obama administration, suggests that the government shutdown and debt ceiling inflicted a toll on the American economy, but that cost is only a…
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Francis and a New Order

The Pope, who has made humility and modesty his hallmark, sent a swift and clear message to Roman Catholics around the world Wednesday that he wants all representatives of the church to do the same. He suspended a German…
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Sharp Words From Business

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donahue had some specific suggestions for Ted Cruz, the Tea Party’s newest star, on Monday. Donahue said he didn’t know Cruz, but watching the Texas senator from the perspective of someone who…
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DeMint Rules

A weak John Boehner’s sorry reality is that he is no longer the real leader of the Republican Party. The true leader is the former senator isn’t just the head of the right’s premier thank tank—he’s now running the…
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Colbert at Al Smith Dinner

The comedian took the dais on Thursday for his keynote speech at the Al Smith white-tie charity dinner, the annual gathering of New York’s Roman Catholic elite and didn’t spare any politicians.. “I have great respect for Cardinal Dolan…
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Examining the Crux of Ted Cruz

Kathleen Parker, the Washington Post opinion writer, makes a strong case for outing Ted Cruz.The only person who loves Cruz more than Ted Cruz is Barack Obama. It is the White House and Democrats, not Republicans, who have advanced…
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Shutdown: Months to Assess Damage in Detail

It will cost the U.S. economy several billion dollars, according to estimates by economic research firms. But the affiliated damage will be far greater, economists said, while eroding confidence. “The three weeks of government shutdown will cost the economy…
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GOP: New Round of Soul-Searching

Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty asked a key question: “What will it take to save the Republicans from the self-destructive impluses of the tea party movement.” Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) advised “I do thinkl we need…
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The Republican Surrender

“We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win,” Speaker John Boehner said. The New York Times Editorial Board noted that he failed to grasp the destruction his battle caused. The result: It has hurt federal employees and needy…
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Ending the Crisis?

The hope was that the Senate would reach a deal on Tuesday but would only go into effect if weak Speaker John Boehner allowed it to go to a vote in the House. That didn’t happen because Boehner continues…
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Nation’s Fate in Boehner’s Hands

It looks like Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are within a breath’s hair of a deal to reopen the government and extend the debt limit for several months.If they ink it on Tuesday, they can probably pass it before…
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For the GOP, moving rightward

As Doyle McManus reported in the Los Angeles Times the Republican Party is at war with itself. The most important actors aren’t Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us to the…
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New Peril Engulfs GOP Brand

A new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Republicans share a far larger share of the blame for a government shutdown than President Obama. Just 24 percent of Americans viewed the GOP favorably,…
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Netanyahu Observed

“Netanyahu is most comfortable predicting disaster, scaring people into doing something. The problem is now he’s lost momentum. His message is clear, his message is the same, but everyone else’s perspective has changed. It’s like you’re the only one…
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Kochs, Other Conservatives Split On Health Law Strategy

Under attack for the government shutdown, some of the most vocal elements of the Conservative Party are publicly splintering, a sign of growing concerns that the defeat of among even hard-core conservatives that the defeat-health-care-at-any-cost may have backfired. The…
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Obama Not Buying GOP Deal Yet

In a meeting at the White House Thursday afternoon the President rejected a proposal from politically besieged GOP leaders to extend the nation’s borrowing authority for six weeks because it could not also reopen the government. Yet both parties…
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Yellen: First Woman To Head Federal Reserve

President Obama’s clear first choice to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as Fed chair was Lawrence H. Summers, a former adviser. But Summers dropped out of the running on Sept.5 in the face of opposition by Democratic senators after an…
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Showing Language and History More Respect

Frank Bruni opines in The New York Times that the methodical extermination of millions of Jews by a brutal regime intent on world domination would resist appropriation as an all-purpose metaphor.You mind think, of all things, genocide might be…
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Conservatives Focus on Killing Budget as Health Care Law Weapon

Soon after President Obama started a second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in Washington to plot strategy.Their push was to repeal Obama’s health care law which was…
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Boehner’s False Pledge

The Speaker has privately told Republican lawmakers anxious about the fallout from the government shutdown that he would not allow a potentially more crippling federal fallout as the atmosphere on Capitol Hill turned increasingly tense on Thursday. His comments,…
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Obama to Republicans: Get Real

The President showed defiance and admonished House Republicans on Tuesday to quit fighting his three-year-old health care law and “to reopen the the government.” It was a show of defiance that reflected Democrats’ confidence that conservatives have overreached after…
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Dishonesty of Voter ID Laws

The Justice Department on Monday sued North Carolina over the state’s restrictive new voting law, which requires photo identification for in-person voting and cuts back on early voting and same-day registration—all of which will disproportionately affect black voters. The…
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Populist Left: A New Hot Ticket?

After Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke at a luncheon in Beverly Hills last month, women from the audience swarmed around her. many asking the same question: will you run for president? This month Warren’s fiery speech at the national…
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Cruz on Meet the Press

My take on Ted Cruz’s much anticipated interview with David Gregory on Sunday was that he threw the irrepressible Republican senator from Texas a series of softballs without once challenging his credibility in defunding Obamacare. Any doubt that Cruz…
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Hispanics Cool to GOP, Poll Finds

A new survey shows that Hispanics, the nation’s largest minority group, are increasingly hostile toward the Republican Party during the political battle over changing immigration law and lean surprisingly liberal on social issues like gay marriage. More than 6…
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Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted

As Paul Krugman points out sometimes the wealthy talk as if they were characters in “Atlas Shrugged,” demanding nothing more from society than that the moochers leave them alone. But these men were speaking for, not against, redistribution from…
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House GOP Raises Stakes in Debt-Ceiling Fight

If the Democrats muster 60 votes, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, will move to strip out House language that guts the health care law and pass a stopgap spending bill that finances the government through Nov.…
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Ted Cruz Ascending

The freshman Republican senator talked for 21 hours and 19 minutes on the Senate floor this week to hope that the public would carry out his message to oppose President Obama’s healthcare law. Within the hour, he was Rush…
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Ted Cruz’s Campaign

On Fox News last Sunday Chris Wallace’s demeanor and the bafflement of an entire nation was about what Cruz hoped to accomplish with his flawed campaign to defund Obamacare. There’s Cruz’s sickly look after Wallace recites derisive statements about…
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A Radical Whisper

Frank Bruni, in a New York Times op-ed, said it wasn’t the particulars of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking message in an interview published last week that stopped him in his tracks, gave fresh hope to many embittered Catholics and caused…
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The Crazy Party

Paul Krugman notes that the Republicans are approaching a political moment of truth where the elite has lost control of the Frankenstein-like monster it created. So now we get to witness the hilarious spectacle of Karl Rove in the…
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Another Insult to the Poor

On Thursday House Republicans passed a bill that would drastically cut federal food stamps and throw 3.8 million Americans out of the program in 2014. This vote came two weeks after the Agriculture Department reported that 17.6 million households…
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Health Care Law: Live or Die GOP Issue

The House leadership has now announced plans to make a series of demands of the White House in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in mid-October, threatening a government default if they don’t get they way. Eric Cantor, the…
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Boehner, Pressed 0n The Right, Yields

The Speaker, after three years of cajoling, finessing and occasionally strong-arming his fitful conservative majority, Boehner waved the white flag on Wednesday, surrendering to demands from his right flank that he tie money to keep the government open after…
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Why Summers Struck Out

Some presidential advisers, including those closest to President Obama, argued that Larry Summers brought crisis management experience and a working knowledge of financial markets that Janet L. Yellen lacks. So did Ben S. Bernanke when President George W. Bush…
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Mission Statement

Aristotle's Politics (Book 1, Chapter 1) is clear that "man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal. For nature does nothing without purpose, and man alone of the animals possesses speech."

The blogosphere watches as a divided America reexamines its soul. After 35 years as a journalist I have broken a long silence to comment again on critical moral and political issues that impact the U.S. body politic. Reflections on JoeScott3.com, an independent, non-profit blog, are posted frequently, not daily. I hope global readers, accepting Aristotle's definition of a political animal, will find this quick scan both provocative and mindful.

About Joe Scott

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Joe Scott spent many years as a columnist for the Herald-Examiner (1978-1989), and later the Los Angeles Times and other California dailies.He was the critically-acclaimed editor and publisher of the Political Animal and California Eye, newsletters (1973-1992). He worked as a political consultant and ran several successful political campaigns in California. Joe Scott is a third-generation Angeleno. He is working on a novel about public corruption in Los Angeles during the late 1930's.